HOW interesting that the rules on admissions to secondary schools in Blackburn with Darwen, that education chairman Councillor Bill Taylor says are "transparent and applied without favour," should result in bias.

And bias which, given his insistence and education director Mark Pattison's adamant denial of this newspaper's charges of egalitarian social engineering interfering in the process, must be an accidental freak.

For, somehow, while parents of children at nearby primary schools are protesting at their children not getting into Pleckgate High School next September, we see that those from schools much further away are, and in increased numbers, even though the majority of them do not have a priority claim through already having a brother or sister there. Odd.

But while we ponder this mystery, we are presented with another fishy item. Namely, the red herring proferred by Coun Taylor who insists that there are no such thing as "feeder" schools for the secondary schools - so that if upset parents imagine that they have a right to expect a place for

their children at the one nearest their home and near their primary school, well, they are mistaken and, one supposes, what the hell are they carping at when this has been the case for years? This, of course, is patent piffle. For no matter what the official line may be, the reality is that feeder schools do exist and have existed for ages.

Otherwise, the system of allocation for school places would be so random that hordes of children, including councillors' own, might have been bussing across the borough for years and all to the understanding of parents.

It is the fact that parents are suddenly playing pop that suggests that the longstanding feeder-school process and the commonsense system of children going to the school nearest their home is now being tinkered with by a meddlesome new education authority.

One which, being Labour-run, cannot resist the ideological itch to wage war on class differences and strive for bland social sameness in school intakes even if it means denial of parental choice.

If this is not a case of noisome we-know-best, it is still one of selection even if that is supposed to be a dirty word to the likes of Coun Taylor. Victory was no accident

AT LAST, things are starting to look up for the motorists bled white by central government and harassed by prodnose councillors with their traffic-calming overkill - they are using their power as voters to give these sanctimonious sorts the elbow.

For just as in East Lancashire, 13 days ago Labour lost control of Hyndburn, hitherto arguably the most anti-car council in the country - and what sweet irony it was that ousted mini-roundabout maniac, council leader George Slynn saw his chief critic and opponent, ex-traffic bobby Adrian Shurmer, end up holding the balance of power - now it is reckoned that its meddlesome, car-hating cranks were to blame for the party also losing power in Sheffield, once so deep-red Labour that it was known as the People's Republic of South Yorkshire.

It has, we are told, put the wind up ministers - to the extent that they fear that, next, Labour will be the loser in London if Jaguars-for-me; dirty-buses-for-you transport supremo John Prescott presses on with his plans for road charges and taxes on company car parks.

And they already have the taxed-to-death truckers swinging a lot of public support away from them, reflecting just how thoroughly fed up motorists are with the government's raid on their wallets. Better still, now they have noticed this trend, the so-far ineffective Tories are said to be planning to go back to their support for the great car-borne society that Margaret Thatcher championed.

This is great. No doubt, it will give nightmares to the pious tree-huggers and those tax-exempt traffic hazards called cyclists over the world choking to death on exhaust fumes - when, together with the hot air of the eco-politicians, their own beany methane emissions and rapid carbon dioxide exhalations while pedalling are probably doing the planet more harm than motorists.

But these bossy sorts should remember that, in a democracy, it is the majority who are supposed to rule . . . just as the put-upon car-owning voters have quite rightly spelled out. Give them some needle

THE families of two boys, aged five and six, and of a girl aged five face five months of agony waiting to find out if they have been infected with the AIDS virus after they were stabbed by a drug addict's needle by another child who found syringes dumped inthe grounds of their school in Iver, Bucks.

Despite all the reassurement they have had from doctors and AIDS charities about the risk being minimal, their long nightmare is unimaginable. But is it not infuriating that they are having to endure it in the first place?

Time and again, hypodermic needles discarded by feckless druggie scum are shown to be scattered about the community. We have had no end of this danger here in East Lancashire.

It is bad enough that, out of their sanctimonious concern for the welfare of these criminal dregs, health trusts and other do-gooder agencies are content to supply them with syringes in the widely-abused "needle-exchange" schemes which use public money to encourage these wasters to break the law while sticking their heads in the sand about the health risks thrown-away needles pose to the public. But it is high time they were made to accept reponsibility for this policy.

If these needles must be dished out, they ought to be printed with numbers or codes that show where they were issued so that anyone stabbed by a used one and put at risk in the dreadful way that these children have been, can have right of redress for their failure to run the "exchange" scheme safely and properly. All aboard the gravy train

THOSE who bother to vote in next month's European elections stand to be confronted by a confusing ballot paper nearly a yard wide in some regions.

This, we are told, is a product of "fairer" proportional representation.

A system which, as we have seen in Scotland and Wales, now allows nobodies of also-ran minority parties to share in government and will for the first time in England mean that who becomes your Euro MP will have more to do with the machinations of party politics than with your cross on the ballot paper.

It is, of course, an insult to democracy that the voters' choice will effectively be restricted to the so-called "closed" party lists of candidates, hand-picked compliant hacks who won't rock the party boat on Europe, rather than individual candidates. But, of course, it is not just this stupid system that is packing the ballot paper with a plethora of people who want to represent you in Europe.

Much more appealing to the would-be Euro politicians is the golden trough that electoral success lets them stick their snouts into - the £100,000-a-year expenses and the fat salaries most voters can only dream of.

It is only a pity that this new electoral system does not include that facility that American voters enjoy - the right to "write-in" the name of someone whose name is not on the ballot paper.

Otherwise, we might have the prospect of Greedy Pig topping the poll across Britain rather than some party placement pretending to have our interests at heart while itching to get on the gravy train.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.